When NetApp bought all-flash specialist Solidfire for $870m a year ago, it gained a well-regarded set of all-flash products that successfully addressed the cloud provider and enterprise market segments.
Computer Weekly storage editor Antony Adshead spoke to Laurence James, NetApp products, alliances and solutions manager, and Martin Cooper, systems engineering director with NetApp SolidFire.
They spoke about plans to integrate Solidfire with Data Ontap data protection functionality such as SnapMirror and SnapVault, how NetApp differentiates Solidfire from its other flash products, and plans for NVMe in Solidfire arrays.
Adshead: NetApp has always made a big thing about having a common operating environment across its storage with the Data Ontap operating system. Will there be any integration between Solidfire and Ontap?
Cooper : There are no plans to integrate Solidfire into Ontap. They will be separate and discrete products in the storage portfolio.
But right now, for example, you can manage our E Series flash arrays [which have their own operating system] via Ontap. And Solidfire can connect to the [cloud-based] NetApp Data Fabric via S3.
James : In future, however, we do have roadmap plans to provide SnapMirror and SnapVault functionality in Solidfire, probably in the next 12 to 18 months.
